Inception

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Well, it was fun to come home and finally read this thread. I didn't want to before.

Wonderful film, I liked it a lot. I especially enjoyed DiCaprio, although after this and Shutter Island, he needs to do a comedy. Either that, or actually have a real living wife.

Just one thing -- while the top was spinning, I started to laugh because I suddenly thought about all those people in the theatre holding their breath waiting for it to stop.

Nolan could easily have faded to black and then there would be this sound of it hitting the table....
 
I agree, Leo's performance was so great, especially in the scenes where his wife jumps, and where he blows up at Arthur for not researching Fischer well enough. He kind of forced me to care about him, but realistically, his story was pretty stale, and Nolan missed every chance to explore his guilt further.

I also agree that Fischer's growth was probably the most profound in the film. He was kind of an asshole, since he was a spoiled billionaire heir, but he drastically changed, starting around the time Leo invented Mr. Charles and Fischer agreed to go into the dream. His scene with his father in the end is the only truly emotional scene in the film for me. It represents a true transformation.
 
I know, I heard that too. I like modern glass buildings but if I was living for 50 years in a self imagined environment I wouldn't have them as the sole surroundings. Anyway we're not talking here about what the characters liked or didn't like, making Cobb say that, well, that's just a cop out, we're talking about what the film makers omitted from the vast scale they could've imagined
 
Fischer's pinwheel is like the Kane's sled. It's the one thing that defines the man that the dream team exploits. If the dream team were to perform inception on Charles F. Kane in some insanely awesome crossover fanfic, they would have made a safe containing the initial snow scene. Then Kane would have broken down and they would have performed the kick and................

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The Matrix, Inception, and Dark City are a highly connected triad, each exploring a different aspect of reality, as in The Real, versus reality of, let's say, Karl Popper's "World 2". TM and I are both clearly action thrillers while DC is more of a mystery. All three are sci-fi and use the motif of urban jungle as their representation of the dream world. Beautifully, all three bear no explicit developmental relationship to each other. Take a look at Inception's art design; it is evident on any poster: it's about architecture, the sleek forms of the city and the business-class heist thieves that work about it, within it. The Matrix features a similar elegance, though it also contains decay. Dark City is utter decay. The world of Dark City is "obscenely finite". It's the world on a platter--Terry Pratchett's Discworld realized. The world of The Matrix is half finite and half virtual infinite. The world of Inception is entirely virtual infinite, as suggested by the ending. Thus, the triad is placed as follows:

Inception -- The Matrix -- Dark City

Keeping in chronology with the latest date beginning on the left of the timeline:

Dark City -- The Matrix -- Inception

We see a simple dialectic format emerge with Dark City as the original, The Matrix as its response, and Inception as their mediation. Unfortunately, this triad works much better when out of order, namely in the structural order presented above. The Matrix is the mediation between Inception and Dark City. It contains distinct elements of both films even though, at the time of its filming, Inception did not exist. Inception was thus the necessary "response" to the missing member of the triad. DC's antithesis, one that had already been mediated by The Matrix.

This is why, I claim, it took such disproportionate amount of time for Inception to me made.

Look at the release dates: DC (1998), TM (1999), I (2010). The conflict had already been mediated; the synthesis was discovered even from before the emergence of the antithesis. This is the Wachowski's genius and why the film made so many waves. If Inception came out before The Matrix, the response to The Matrix would have been more mild, as would the response to Inception. Instead, both films were switched out of their dialectical order--their natural form of development--and thus retained their ability to shock and surprise. Hollywood executives may be smarter than you think.

More later................
 
This movie starts with a 1 minute flashback. Uh oh. This movie has held #1 in the box office for 2 weeks in a row, and shows no sign of letting up. When I went to see it, the theater was full. I was expecting to be blown away. Well, I wasn
 
When I saw this,my mind was hurt because so much ideas about the explanation of this movie came into me. I really loved it because you needed to think to understand this huge mind twisted movie, i loved how the dreams were so twisted.Cobb's (DiCaprio) life was very depressing,I cant believe how Cobb could handle everything,his wife dying, not seeing his children,going into dreams,trying to leave the wife but i bet a part of him wouldn't want to leave his wife but he ended up doing it.
 
I don't remember a scene where Cobb obtains Mal's top, as far as I can remember it's only ever seen (without Cobb) in their dream world. It's also been pointed out to me, that Cobb's totem is his wedding ring, which he wears in all the dreams and not in the ending.
 
You sure you were watching Inception? It wasn't presented in 3D anywhere. Nolan isn't a big fan of it.

I think if you give yourself up to the outlandish set-up to begin with, the movie can be a very enjoyable heist film without requiring deep thought, just close attention. There are certainly larger ideas explored in the film, like regret and guilt, creation and inspiration, but even ignoring these, the movie is paced so well that I'm surprised you got bored.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILER SPOILERS

I do agree that the emotional core of the story--Cobb's guilt over performing inception on his wife, and his struggle to overcome it--does not feel real enough to me. Also, I don't like the ambiguity of whether or not the ending was a dream, whether or not the entire movie was a dream. This is possible, if you think about how few times Cobb spun his top. But this would basically nullify any emotional investment the viewer has in the characters and their plights.
 
Actually, I found the "Jesus Christ" line to be very awkward and failed for me every time they showed it. I almost wanted to laugh at that line for some reason. I don't know, just the phrase "Jesus Christ" seems kinda goofy to me at that moment... this is probably just me.
 
That's probably just you, that was one of my favorite lines in the movie, because Leo delivered it so well. Though, I admit, the phrase is a little awkward in that moment. I thought it was weird that Nolan cut to the next scene immediately after that phrase. He never allowed DiCaprio to express his feelings right after his wife jumped. This is without a doubt the single most traumatic experience in Cobb's life and the motivation that drives literally the entire plot, and Nolan chose to skip the entirety of his phase of processing the incident. I would have loved to see how Cobb went back into the hotel room and cried or panicked, or did whatever he would do--I don't know, because they skipped it--and then left before he could be discovered.
 
Interesting stuff, planet, though I certainly don't believe that this is part of some grand scheme. I think it holds up in the sense that each film has to be released with the foreknowledge of the entire history of similar films that come before it. Inception as it was originally conceived might have felt like a tired retreat of The Matrix before The Matrix came out, but once it did, it would have had to evolve and change, or else it wouldn't have been made and we wouldn't have discussed it.

Any thoughtful film is going to have to be this way, or it's not nearly as likely to get made, so there's a selection bias when it comes to the order they come out in, and the manner in which they "shock and surprise." We're seeing the end result of the process, not all the ways in which they may have been exactly alike, or more or less similar, before they got to "see" each other.


He picks up the top in the hotel room, I believe; it's among all the broken glass.
 
I have a lot of questions, not meant to detract from the movie, because I think it was one of the best movies in recent memory. I just need some clarification. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

There may be obvious answers to this, I'm so confused tying things together, that sometimes I lose hold of the obvious stuff, so please be patient with me. I'm going to try to break down the climax chronologically, because I see some inconsistencies that I think Nolan is too good to forget, so I must be fundamentally mistaken about something.

Fischer was shot as soon as he entered the snow fortress by Cobb's projection of Mal. He then went to limbo, was captured by Mal, who was holding him hostage to get to Cobb, and then he awaited revival, seemingly dead, on the snow level. Saito died considerably later than this, much later factoring in time differences in each dream level.

As for Cobb, he and Ariadne left the snow level and went into limbo to find Fischer before Saito died, where they met Mal in their house. If Fischer was in limbo so long, why did he still appear as his young self when Ariadne found him and kicked him off the building? Saito was there, it seems, for a shorter period than Fischer, yet he became an old man. I accept that after he watched Mal die in his arms, he resolved his guilt and was able to keep her out of his subconscious. But what happened that made him wake up on the shores of his subconscious? Isn't this the same limbo in which he and Ariadne just killed Mal? Did he pass out from the stab wound and wake up still in limbo, but in the place where he always starts? He couldn't have died, because I think that would have woken him up. At least that's how he and Saito wake up in the end.

Ariadne was about to shoot Cobb to wake him up, but then he said he was going to look for Saito. So after kicking Fischer off the building to initiate his kick, she herself jumped off and left limbo. So those two went back up to the snow level. That means Eames, Ariadne, Fischer, and Saito's dead body were on the snow level (Eames' dream), Arthur was on the hotel level (his dream), and Yusuf was physically in the van as he drove it off the cliff on the rainy city level (his dream).

Are the waking up rules basically this?: First, you need to sync up kicks on every level for every person with the Edith Piaf countdown; the lower the level you're on, the slightly sooner your kick must be (Ariadne and Fischer fell off the building in limbo to enter the snow dream, Eames jump-started and awoke Fischer as he fell off the building in limbo, moments later they exploded the fortress and fell into Arthur's dream just as Arthur dropped them in the elevator, which pushed them up to Yusuf's dream.) Then, Arthur, Ariadne, Fischer, and Eames (disguised as a projection of Fischer's godfather) escaped the sinking van. Did this kick push Yusuf up a level into being fully awake on the plane, since the furthest level he dropped to was his dream (the first one)? Or did he also escape the van under water in his dream? I can't remember, but either way, it raises questions for me. If he was still in the van underwater, does that mean only the timer can awake people from the first (Yusuf's) dream? And if Cobb and Saito shot themselves in limbo to wake up, were they somewhere in one of the dreams until the timer went off? It appears they awoke a little later than everyone else, but does that mean the timer didn't wake them up?

Since they were under such heavy sedation, they would fall into limbo if they got killed on any of the three dream levels. But in limbo, if you die, do you just wake up? Because that's basically how Cobb and Saito woke up back on the plane. Why didn't Ariadne just shoot herself and wake up after kicking Fischer off the building? Or maybe she didn't understand the rules of limbo? Also, I can't remember, did she reawaken on the snow fortress level and wait for Eames kick of blowing up the fortress, or immediately enter Arthur's dream in the falling elevator?

Also, in limbo is time completely relative? Did Saito only age because he so frequently referenced dying an old, lonely man, so that is what happened to him. I don't think Mal and Cobb literally got old in limbo, if they did, I don't think they realized their aging. Since it was a dream, they saw each other as forever the same as when they first started the dream. Is this why Cobb could be in limbo so long without aging, because he didn't imagine himself aging? Because, think about it, based on the snow fortress level time, he went into limbo about five to ten minutes after Saito at most. Then, for about five to ten minutes snow level time, he and Ariadne walked through Cobb's old 'subconscious neighborhood' before reaching Mal. Factor in time spent talking with Mal, watching Mal die, and doing whatever he did to wind up on the shore, and he was in limbo for long enough so that if Saito was that old, he should at least looked half as old if not as old as Saito.

Good luck answering these, they're really poorly organized and some may not make sense, but I just typed questions as they popped in my head. I think I must have forgotten some parts of the movie, so please correct me if my sequencing or something else is wrong.
 
The sudden cut was good IMO. A prolonged Leo-cry sequence would have felt cliched, and Leo's panic was heightened later when his lawyer said he had to leave "nao" and the whole kidz thing. Plus, I was already turned off with "Jesus Christ".

I'm not sure repeating the same shots over and over was necessary. I feel like this is a kind of a dumb way to "remind" you of "that". I think they maybe did "Jesus Christ" twice or thrice, but one time was enough for me. Each time afterwards felt like more of a joke.

F*ck am I a bad person for not mourning Mal?
 
No, they're valid questions, but I honestly don't think that they deserve need to be answered--that is, you shouldn't fret about them like you're missing something.

You're not. I've seen the film twice, and there's no way around them. The time in limbo is definitely just a big plot hole. Personally, I don't care, and neither does anyone else as long as stuff generally works.

I prefer the symbolic/psychological route to the hard sci-fi boil down of dream dynamics. The machine is NOT EXPLAINED at all. It isn't about the machine or the technology or the dynamics, which, I agree with you, are all messed up.

Then again, let's get something straight. These are dreams not VR simulations like in The Matrix. I don't know about you, but when I dream, there's sometimes very little logic involved. The Architect is the one who is able to maintain a stable environment to fool the subject. In Limbo (lolradiohead), there is no architect. It is just "infinite subconscious" or "what is left over from the other people who have been there, that means YOU Cobb!".

One of the "complaints" about the film I've been hearing around is that Nolan doesn't quite take full advantage of the Lynchian dream logic. I get why he doesn't in the Extraction/Inception sequences--because it would be totally against the purpose of those procedures--but Limbo should have been more insane. Maybe it was? Maybe those plot holes were just Limbo being Limbo.

This is an adequate excuse for me. It is a dream after all.
 
The hell are you referring to?




This certainly didn't seem like a film that was hard to grasp at all. I belive Nolan threw in a trick here and there to raise a few questions, but generally everything was pretty straightforward.
 
Yes, but to say that someone could train your subconscious as a defence mechanism, is to denigrate the might of human intelligence and the utter delight of the power of human imagination. To confine the subconcious into preprepared vistas and not give us any leeway (apart from Cobb's freight train) to go off at a, very human, tangent, was not where I expected Nolan to go.
 
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